Welcome to steph you missed in history Class from how Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly Fry and I'm Tracy V. Wilson, and we were recently lucky enough to be the guests of the National World War Two Museum in New Orleans, Louisiana, and the museum asked us if we would do a show there about the USO and Bob Hopes work with the organization to run parallel to an exhibit that they are currently running about Bob Hope called so Ready for the Laughter The Legacy of Bob Hope, and that exhibit is going to run until February. The museum also has its own podcast about film and World War Two history called Service on Cellu Lloyd. We'll talk a little bit more about that at the end of the show. Yeah, I think Tracy and I would both say that it can't be overstated how much we absolutely loved our time in New Orleans. Absolutely, And I spent the day that we did our show, I spent basically all of the time I had available at the museum and it was a great experience. Yeah, that facility is amazing, It is huge, it is growing, Uh. They put so much incredible care and love into every exhibit. Uh. And they have just some amazing pieces that you will not find anywhere else. Uh. And the city, of course, is in utter delight. I grew up on the Florida Panhandle, so I had spent a lot of time there. It was Tracy's first time there. It was very fun for you to really see the city for the first time. Uh. And similarly, my husband has been through there with me before, but not really for an extended period of time, so it was great to to watch him and my other friends really explore it for the first time. I said during one of the breaks during our show that we don't normally put on the podcast, that I have not felt so relaxed and happy in probably five years. The city is just beautiful, and it has this great culture and amazing food and a wonderful art scene, and there's just something really magical about New Orleans. So if you've not been there, highly encourage it. Yeah, hopefully you too will feel happy and relaxed in all new ways. But what we're going to do now is jump into the live show that we did there at the World War Two Museum, and we Hope you enjoy. Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly Fry and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. And the USO has of course been a huge part of keeping the military going since its inception, and legendary performer Bob Hope is closely tied to us O history, so they very kindly the World War Two Museum asked us come and talk about these things, which we jumped at the chance to do because one, I we both are into history too. I love old Hollywood. Uh Three, It's just kind of an important story that doesn't always get talked about, although it is now thanks to again museums just like this. So tonight we're going to talk about both of those things. This is a really fun topic for US podcasters too, because Bob hopes Are career was all in radio and so in many ways he was working in an audio medium and then it became something very different as entertainment evolved, and he ended up with this whole other career. Uh So, first we're gonna talk with just about a brief overview of USO history, focused primarily on its founding in its early years, and then we're going to talk about Bob Hope's involvement with the organization first and primarily the mediat part of his stuff that we'll talk about is World War two related, but we will also include his involvement in wars that happened after that and and beyond, and also working back home. And just as a matter of expectations management, Uh, this is not a comprehensive history of either of those topics, because you would be here for two weeks, uh, and probably you're gonna want to go home and see your loved ones and eat and do things like that. So, um, we don't want to go on for days. But hopefully this will provide sort of a fun supplement one to the fantastic exhibit here at the museum, and just a fun way to talk about Bob Hope's dedication to public service, which continues to have long lasting packed today. Also, we're going to try very hard not to cry. I make no promises. Um. You know, Tracy and I both have fathers who have served. I definitely want you once again thank those of you in the audience who are veterans for your service. Is one of those topics that often chokes us up. So race we're going to try to be grown up and think about the things that make us not cry. But I could happen, and I apologize in advance because it will get ugly. When we're in the studio, we can stop for a moment, but when we're in front of a crowd of people, we we kind of gotta keep on. Usually I'm okay in front of the crowd, but this one might be the one. I will see you guys might get the first live breakdown, of which maybe you'll be into. I don't know you were there when it happened. Uh So, while the mention of the USO today conjures images of overseas groups of soldiers being entertained by a list stars, which is totally appropriate, Initially the organization was formed to keep the troops state side more occupied. So in the fall of nineteen forty, the US military draft was approved by President Franklin D. Roosevelt and the United States, as you all know, had not entered World War Two at this point, but it was becoming increasingly likely in most people's minds that this was going to happen, and so over the next several months, more than one million people enlisted, and that meant that there were suddenly these huge numbers of soldiers filling military bases, and aside from their training, they kind of had to sit there on tenter hooks and wait for this war to happen. General George C. Marshall had served as a staff officer during World War One with the first Infantry Division under General Pershing, and as he saw these bases becoming more and more populated in nineteen forty and early ninety one, he and other members of the military leadership recalled some problems they had seen with servicemen filling up their leisure time. During World War One, it had been common for people to basically drink heavily in their downtime. There was a lot of sexually transmitted disease infection that then had to be treated by military doctors. Led to a lot you'll see still propaganda poster reproductions about all of that, and so General Marshall really felt like a structured system of entertainment and social services that were designed to fill the troops leisure time could really cut down someone on some of the problems they had seen in World War One. And just as an aside, uh there had been entertainment offerings for troops during World War One, a number of camps had what were called liberty theaters, and these were built by the Commission of Training Camp Activities. And those theaters were built after General Pershing had allegedly said, give me a thousand soldiers occasionally entertained to ten thousand without entertainment, and so in preparation for this likely entry into World War Two, General Marshall and others were thinking that this was great to begin with, but there needed to be a more comprehensive program that offered more than just the scheduled entertainment though so then at the same time, the head of the National Jewish Welfare Board had started meeting in New York with the leadership of other welfare organizations who had been all providing support for the troops steering World War One. They were all brain starting ways that they might be able to serve again if the United States entered World War Two, and so eventually this led to their meeting with President Franklin the Roosevelt, and as a result of that meeting, the President asked the y m c A, the y w c A, the Salvation Army, the Jewish Welfare Board, the National Catholic Community Services and the Travelers Aid Association of America to all combine their resources to help the soldiers awaiting deployment pass the time, have a little bit of fun, and get some much needed social connection while they prepared for what was potentially a very grim future. I had no idea until you sent me that line for this that this had been such a multi organizational effort. Like in my head, it was something that the Army said we need this, and then it happened at I had no sense that there were so many different organizations involved. So on February fourth, ninety one, the u s O was officially formed through a congressional charter and the first iteration was called the United Service Organizations for National Defense, Incorporated. It's not a government agency, but a private nonprofit working in conjunction with the US military, and the idea from the beginning was that people, regular citizens would provide the financial support system for this organization, and to that end, a wildly successful fundraising effort started right away. These fundraising fundraising efforts were incredibly successful. Donations rolled into total more than sixteen million dollars in the u s o s first year, and that is sixteen million dollars in nineteen forty one. That's not adjusted to today's numbers. It would be a massive number today. Uh. And the message of all of this was completely clear. This new organization was providing a safe, wholesome way to keep soldiers station in the states entertained and occupied. It was better than going to bars or just roaming around looking for something to do. And it was also going to help soldiers build and maintain strong ties to the communities around their bases, because often they were not near their homes, and the idea was that when they were shipped off, they were going to have a deeper sense of connection to their home country. So both public and private spaces near the military bases became places that soldiers could go and socialize, or get refreshments or pick out reading material. All of this under the USO banner. There were even mobile USO centers that traveled to the more remote locations and they would take books and sporting goods and refreshments and film projection setups and things like that to the people that were farther out. Yeah, those are pretty amazing. If you ever see a picture of one, it's like this magical box that just opens up and entertaining things fly out. Um. They were really really smartly designed, and things that USO centers were as promised, kept kept very wholesome. Indeed, there was no alcohol, and most of the social centers had these unofficial chaperones in the form of older married women who managed the logistical needs of the centers, but they also just kind of kept an eye on things to make sure no one was behaving poorly or unwholesomely. Uh. There were junior hostesses present as well. A lot of times you will see them listed as the true draw of these centers, but they actually had to pass a screening to make sure that they were moral, young ladies and not likely to get any of these soldiers into trouble. Junior hostesses were supposed to socialize with the men only at the us O club and not outside of it. That rule was bent from time to time. That was not a I mean, any of you who have connections to a family who maybe had a soldier that was in the military at this time probably have a story about some romance with the junior hostess. It was not all in the center, but that is fine. So the first permanent USO building was erected in November of nineteen forty one at Fort Bragg in Fayetville, North Carolina, and that center is still in to operation. And of course, the United States entered the war on December seven after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, and soon the young men who had benefited from the u s o s hospitality while they were stationed in the US were sent overseas to fight, and the USO went with them. The group started to organize camp shows, and these are the ones that featured a list celebrities who were volunteering their time and talents to support the troops and to try to boost morale. Soon the shows became their own entity, USO Camp Shows, Inc. And that was a nonprofit organization headed up by the chairman of the William Morris Agency, Abe Last Vogel. The USO camp shows were also a huge success in by ninety seven, there were more than four hundred twenty five thousand shows performed for troops through the organization. But the success of the USO actually also caused some minor issues of their own of its own. So when the short film Mr. Gardinia Jones was produced as a cooperative effort among the US Office War Information, the USO and Metro Goldwyinmyer Studios. UH in two. It raised a few concerns with the army. So this film is described as a documentary and it's really a promotional piece for the USO. Starring Ronald Reagan. It's the story of a young man who joins the war effort and his mother's decision to form a u s O center. This all sounds fine, it's only thirteen minutes long, but because the troops in the film were portrayed as being so excited to enjoy the benefits of the USO, and these benefits included showers, something that they had outside of the USO. They did not need to wait for the USO to come around to have a shower. Uh. The Army thought this was spaint painting, kind of a false picture of what military life was like. Yeah, they thought like both to the troops and the folks back home, they're like, how grim are they going to think it is? Even when we're not engaged in any kind of combat. If all of the men in this movie look like the tex savery Auga every time, they're like, what a movie? What I can have some soap that did cause a little bit of trouble, but it eventually got worked out and they were able to show it. By the time the first round of the USO ended in the nineteen forties, as Tracy said, there had been more than four hundred twenty five thousand shows and civilian volunteers. UH totaled up to more than one point five million people over the course of that time. Its largest number at one point was seven hundred thirty nine thousand. That was in mid nineteen forty three, and in nineteen forty four the number of USO recreational centers maxed out at three thousand, thirty five. After World War Two, the USO was disbanded and then formally dissolved in ninety It wasn't long, though, before the Korean War began in nineteen fifty, and on March seven, nineteen fifty one, the USO was reformed and reorganized at the request once again of George C. Marshall, who at that point was the Secretary of War, and since then the USO has persisted provide entertainment, comfort, and social services to soldiers around the globe. In nineteen nine, President Jimmy Carter signed the u s o's Congressional Charter, which establishes that the USO remains important in the lives of our service members even during peacetime. And today, the USO has its own bipartisan and bicameral Congressional Caucus, and there are currently more than two hundred USO centers around the world, all of which are staffed with volunteers. Of course, we are also going to talk about Bob Hope. The museum has a wonderful Bob Hope exhibit that is part of why we're here today. And before we get into his connection to the us O, this is where we take a quick break. So many many celebrities have been involved with the u S O famously over the years, but none became so closely associated with it as Bob Hope. Initially, a lot of Hopes work entertaining U S servicemen had happened on the radio. At that point, he had become a star as a radio personality, but he he only started his film career in The main gig that he had going on was the very popular The Pepsident Show Starring Bob Hope, which had started running, and his first performance for an all military audience happened when He took that radio show, at the urging of his producer, to March Air Force Base that is known as March Air Reserve Base in Riverside County, California to record a live show, and he opened with a joke that would probably not play today, which was as soon as I got into camp, I received a ten guns salute, they told me on the operating table. Uh. There is footage of him delivering that joke in the exhibit. Yes, it's no shade to Holly's comedy time, not Bob Hope. I hate to break it to you. I do different comedy. Yeah, it's one of those things. I wonder if the same joke would play as well today when the whole topic is a little bit more fraud. It's different now. But yeah, you can see him say it in that exhibit. Do it um. This show took place in a gymnasium. The gymnasium still exists today and is now called March Fields Sports and Fitness Center, and that facility had a plaque added to its exterior in commemorate the start of Hopes ongoing work with the troops that happened there, and the plaque reads on May sixty one, Bob Hope brought his NBC radio show to the march Field Gym and broadcast his National Network show from this site. It marked the first time Mr. Hope had ever performed for military personnel. This landmark broadcast was the forerunner to the legendary USO shows that have entertained American troops around the world since ninety three. And he also started appearing on a radio variety show called Command Performance on July seven, ninety two that was produced by Armed Forces Radio exclusively for broadcast to bases uh and he was also the Pepsident show was also being broadcast to the troops. But Bob Hope loved hosting Command Performance because he could be a little more daring and get away with a little bit more blue humor than he could with NBC. So it was kind of a freeing experience in some ways. Yeah, the military audie audience and the network audience, and very that same summer, we had a conversation with a friend and former colleague who had become an Army sergeant about the troops, and the sergeant suggested that Hope should visit soldiers who were stationed in Alaska. He went with for this idea. He started planning the trip almost immediately, and the plan was for Bob and then uh fellow Pepsidant show radio personalities Frank's Francis Langford and Jerry Kelowna and guitarist Tony Romano to all make this trip together. And as this forsome September departure from San Francisco approach, they actually got news that inclement weather suggested it would really be better if they can't. And their schedule was really super tight because Bob Hope, of course, was already a popular entertainer, and he had other bookings that he had to do, like for his radio show to keep it going, and there was absolutely no way that they could promise him that, yes, you will be back in time and keep this thing on schedule. But Hope did not care. He telegrammed the base saying that they were all packed and ready, and he concluded his missive with please let us make our trip and we'll take our chances, and they were soon on right en route to Fairbanks, Alaska. From there, Hoping, the team went to nome Unimac Island and Yukon Territory. Troops always didn't always have advanced noticed that celebrities were coming, and even if the tour schedule had been announced, there would have been some surprises. The comedians and musician would sometimes do impromptu shows for much smaller groups of soldiers when they ran into them during their travels from one location to another. This was definitely not glamorous, though it was freezing, travel could be really dicey and in some cases dangerous, and they did not have any kind of luxurious accommodations. No. This is one of those moments where I was doing the research and and reading about this, and I just like my respect kind of went off the charts for all of them, because they really put up with stuff that I think most celebrities today would scoff at, just in terms of dealing with really gross, unpleasant moments. Um. But there was also, as Tracy said, a lot of danger. So on a flight from Cordova to Anchorage, their plane lost first its radio and then one of its engines. It was only lucky enough to make their landing very hard because when Elmendorf Air Force Base crew found out what was happening, that this plane had lost communication, they broke protocol and they turned on their searchlights and they were not supposed to do that, but that gave the pilots a visual to guide them in, and Bob was very aware of how close they came to disaster. He described later when he wrote about it, that he looked at Francis and remembered that he had promised her husband that she would be okay, and that he had begged him to let her go, and he thought, I've just walked her into her death. Um. But later on and he gave inscribed watches to each of those pilots see him getting choked up. Um that read thanks for my life, which was something those pilots later reiterated that they went on to long careers. That was still the scariest flight of their lives. Man, you didn't tell me that part. Well, I saved it for now. Despite all the odds and a series of bad weather issues, Hope was able to get to Seattle and do his scheduled radio broadcast from there before turning right around and going back to the Alaskan tour. And once the trip concluded, despite of all the freights and the rough rides and the icy cold, Bob Hope decided that he would be devoting a lot more time to doing similar trips. He told reporters he wouldn't be in Hollywood very much after that because he had some other things to do. And though they had faced discomforts and those dangerous trips in Alaska, Bob's Little Troop immediately signed on in ninete to make a trip to the European Theater and this was their first overseas tour for the USO. Jerry Colonna was unable to make the trip due to some scheduling on flicks, and so Hope brought in a vaudevillian named Jack Pepper in his place, and Francis Langford Tony Romano both remained with the troop and they flew out of LaGuardia in the wee hours of June, headed to newfound Newfoundland, which I always say wrong, uh. And from there they departed for Great Britain, and they actually were headed to Great Britain and then they had to return to Canada due to bad winds. Uh. So their first performance of the tour was actually completely unscheduled. They were like, well, we're here, So they performed for the Royal Canadian Air Force at their command station as sort of their warm up show for the trip. And then the next day they once again set out for Europe, and this time they made their way to London. London was in really bad shape from the war at this point, and the performers were immediately struck by the toll that the conflict had taken on the city. Even small necessities like soap were not available, in spite of the joke I made about soap earlier. The schedule was also really grueling as they traveled all through England. They gave us an as four shows a day. Anytime that there was space they could turn into a stage. They really realized how very desperately their levity was needed, and Hope later wrote that you would have to be a terrible comedian not to get a laugh from those audiences. But they also found this work incredibly challenging, and all of them tried to keep things very light and entertaining, even when, for example, they were visiting wounded soldiers in the hospital, and there were certainly moments when they wanted to break down. Francis Langford tells a story about how she kind of got let outside so she could cry because she was not holding it together because Bob Hope was insistent that they could not fall apart in front of these men. They were there to bring light and to bring laughter, and not to remind anyone just how dangerous their lives were. After five weeks in Britain, Hope and the team moved on to North Africa, which was blisteringly hot but even they but even more frightening than the heat were the air raids the German. The Germans bombed the areas that they were in on several occasions, and at one point Bob sprained his ankle when they had to run for cover and he and Francis Langford had to dive into a ditch. And they next moved to Palermo, where they performed for massive crowds of sixteen thousand to nineteen thousand men at a time, often with P thirty eight fighters in the sky above them in case of a raid, and just as in North Africa, there were bombings. At one point they were all trapped in their hotel rooms. They could not get to a safe place and they had to just ride this raid out, sitting there in their hotel, terrified, and later Hope famously wrote about this experience, after you have listened to a raid for a little while, you begin to be afraid that just the noise will kill you. Then after you've listened to it a little while longer, you begin to be afraid it won't. After traveling in Italy, the Hope crew went back to North Africa before returning to the United States after eleven weeks of touring, and when the tour ended, Hope had so much to do. He had been asked by a lot of the troops that he met to reach out to their families or to their girlfriends back home, and he followed through on all those requests. He also wrote a book with ghostwriter Carol Carroll about the tour called I Never Left Home. Hope donated the money from the book and that was published in paperback in Juno. He donated donated that money to the National War Fund. So in nineteen four Hope put together a trip troupe to tour the Pacific Theater that included Lankford, Romano, and Kelowna, as well as new players Patty Thomas and Barney Dean. And Patty Thomas was a very attractive young woman. One of the things that Bob Hope would do it's a little outmoded now, is he would you know, trot a beautiful woman out on stage and say to the soldiers, this is what you're fighting for. Uh. And so she was kind of that person. But because of that, things would sometimes get uncomfortable on the road with men making unwanted adv pances, and so often Bob would just step in and tell the would be suitor that Patty was his girlfriend, even though that was not the case, just so that they would leave her alone. The specific tour went on for six weeks starting on June twenty nineteen, and then the group head into Australia. While flying into Sydney from Brisbane, their plane almost went down or one of the engines failed, and things got so dire that the pilot ordered the passengers to jettison everything they could. They made an emergency landing on water, scuffing across the surface and coming to rest on a sandbar. Bob and his team, rattled, but dedicated performed their scheduled show that night. Yeah, I don't think I could have kept it together. Hope also started writing columns about their travels in war zones that were then published in the papers. Back home and the Pepsident Show had hoped that they could do a live show from one of these uh, one of these locations, But initially the War Department stopped that idea cold because he didn't want to give away locations to the enemy. But Hope did eventually get to broadcast from a naval hospital. They did more after that, UH, and the conclusion of the broadcast took a rather serious turn as he turned off his jokester mode for a little bit and made very clear to the people back home that the young men that he was meeting every single day, we're making very deep sacrifices and really needed support. It became really common practice for Bob Hope to reach out to troops who couldn't make it to his scheduled shows. A lot of times he would load the Federal his fellow performers into jeeps and then go find these troops wherever they were out in the field and try to give them a bit of entertainment. There weren't agents, there weren't assistants. It was just a handful of comedians and singers making sure that the men on the front lines felt appreciated and seen and loved. Yet there are so many stories of him going, oh, that group tried to get to us so they couldn't make it. Do you know where they are right now? And they would literally just run and go and spend an hour with them, telling them jokes and trying to lighten their emotional burden. Um, which is pretty amazing. They're literally you cannot count them. I don't think we will ever get an accurate account of how many times Bob Hope performed in the USO because there are so many of those little moments that were never recorded or documented. And Hope and company went back to Europe in though the troops part due to exhaustion and also the knowledge that the war was finally coming to a close. We're a little bit less responsive than they had encountered earlier in the war. Uh, and that was a little bit of a downer for them. But also Francis Langford was not there with them. She had moved on to her own show. There was some Hollywood drama around that about her moving into another another position. So instead Bob Hope brought Gail Robbins into the troop and then halfway through the tour, while the performers were in Germany, the Japanese surrender was announced on August and so Hope canceled the remaining dates on the tour and went home. That actually surprised some people. They thought he was going to go ahead and finish, because it wasn't like they went we're done and everyone went home the next day. But I think it was just they had reached an exhaustion point where it was just time to be like, all right, let's just pack this up. Well, and at that point, because things are headed toward closure, like the need of can we please just laugh at something is not quite as high. No, it's probably d prioritized over how fast can we pack and get out of here? How how fast can we wrap up every loose end? And he's wrapping. Bob Hope's work with the USO during World War Two really cemented his place as an entertainment icon. He had earned the love of the troops and the folks back home in the United States, and the ratings for his show were really never better. Even after the war was over, he still felt a deep connection to his work with the military. Hope was asked by Secretary of the Air Force Stewart Symington if he would go entertained troops in Berlin who were carrying out the missions that came to be known as the Berlin Airlift that is also known as Operation Victuals, which was running supplies to West Berlin via air after the Soviets had blockaded road access, and Hope agreed and he put together a cast from his newly reworked radio show which was called The Bob Hope Show, and he flew to Berlin to give a performance which launched a long running tradition, which was a special Christmas show for the troops. When the Korean War started in nineteen fifty, Hope immediately wanted to get involved, and this time he wanted to take a much larger show, a troop of fifty people. While General MacArthur initially wanted no entertainment groups larger than six people and no women entertainers entering the combat zone, Hope eventually got his way after using his contacts with the military to help his case. And this time, I mean it really was huge. We mentioned fifty people, but there were bands, there were singing groups, there were comedians of course, there were writers that went on the road with them to work jokes along the way, and Bob's brother Jack went along and kind of helped keep everything running smoothly. Actress and singer Gloria to Haven was the female lead of the show for the first half of the tour, and Maryland Maxwell was planned to move into that role for the second half. And they went first to Hawaii and then the Quaduline a toll which I probably pronounced incorrectly, uh guam Okinawa, Tokyo and beyond, and over four weeks, the singers, dancers, musicians, and comedians gave a staggering fifty four performances. It's just about two a day. We mentioned earlier that they were sometimes doing five a day, but when you think about, uh, how much larger this show was, and just the logistical nightmare of fifty people versus five, this was really still pretty impressive. They just couldn't quite manage five a day because they did not have that tiny, nimble troupe that they started with. Incidentally, one of the writers on hope specific tour, Larry Gilbert, went on to create and produce the series Mash, which was informed by what he had seen while on tour through the bases in the Korean War. Hope's involvement with the USO continued, of course, after the Korean War ended. He visited basses. He always did his Christmas tours while continuing his radio, film and television career. That is what always astounds me. He had he could have just done the USO stuff, and that's a pretty big full time career. Yet he also was maintaining his regular at home, non military involved career. Um. But it did take a bit of a downward turn for him in a public eye, at least during the Vietnam War. Yeah, in nineteen sixty four, Hope in his troop headed to Vietnam for the first time at the request of the Defense Department, and the location for this show was a secret. Even Hope and his colleagues did not know the base locations they were going to be going to. They first reached Saigon and when they got to their hotel, there was a crowd outside, and Hope thought it was a group of people who were coming to meet him and the rest of the troop. They had actually stumbled onto a bomb scene because the hotel across the street had just been hit, and some reports suggested that Hope might have actually been the target. Yeah, there was a belief that he was a target because nobody wanted American troops to have the morale boost that something like that would provide. And just the year prior, in nineteen sixty three, President Kennedy had presented the Congressional Gold Medal in recognition to Hope for his immense service to the military. But of course, at that point there was controversy on the horizon because the Vietnam War was not supported by everyone in the US. Hopes ongoing work during the war and his friendship with President Nixon meant that he was not the universally beloved figure that he had been earlier in his career, and this really represented a turning point in a shift that had been gradually gradually happening over a number of years. Hope had been a young upstart earlier on in his career, and over time he had become really established. He wasn't a cheeky young rebel anymore. He was a wealthy, established success. His jokes in his early career had been really edgy, and at this point they had become a little more passe as other up and coming comedians had pushed the envelope in their own way. His jokes about women I, womanizing and other topics had become a little dated and trends of comedy had just moved on to other things. Yeah, he was always really cagy about how wealthy he had become. He was really smart. He invested in a lot of things in addition to just making money and entertainment. And there are so many clips of him on like talk shows going I'm not as rich as people say. Like, he really was trying to downplay his wealth, even though I encourage you all to go home and google his house. It was built to look like a volcano. Um it doesn't literally look like a volcano. It's like a shape style that like a very kind of you know, that that mid century modern thing. But he wanted to downplay how wealthy he was, even while living in the most spectacular home you could imagine. But those jokes that we talked about that had become passe would often still play to a military audience who were just eager and thankful for a lighthearted reminder of home. But even within the military, there were conflicting views of Vietnam, and that meant that Hope experienced on occasion some critical reception from military personnel that he had never dealt with before. And at one point during a Christmas Eve, show, he mentioned that President Nixon was doing everything he could to bring the troops home, and that comment did not go over well. There were a lot of soldiers in the audience who thought he was outright lying. Some of them started booing uh, and to get the crowd back, Hope eventually brought out Connie Stevens, who was touring with him, to sing She's saying Silent Night, and the whole crowd kind of going along and it it fixed the moment, but it was very, very scary time for him in terms of just like I thought, I knew what I was doing, and I don't anymore. And the even in the face of these kinds of moments, though, Hopes support of the troops never wavered at all. He knew that the war was really unpopular with a lot of people, but he also felt like he wouldn't be able to look at himself in the mirror if he didn't make an effort to support the deployed personnel from the U. S. Military. He saw and understood how badly they needed somebody to just unconditionally care about them, and in return, he was constantly receiving thousands of letters from the soldiers who he had entertained sharing personal stories and saying thanks or asking him to reach out to their families back home. He really got in the habit of reviewing his military letters a couple of times a week with his secretary, and he would dictate personal responses to as many of them as he could. Yeah, if you have not been upstairs to the exhibit, there are a few pieces of mail included there that are wrenching, um and beautiful. But he his career just the same took a hit because of his vocal backing of the U. S involvement in Vietnam. So he faced criticism both at home and on the road for his conservative stance and the jokes that he made belittling war protests. But he still remained so determined and dedicated and energetic about his involvement with the U. S O. And in some ways that has really paved the way for other entertainers to support the military serving in unpopular actions through USO tours. Some of them have even outright said, I don't support this war, but I support the troops and I support the people I'm going to entertain. When Hope was honored at the Kennedy Center in one segment of the show featured military personnel he had entertained throughout the years, from World War to You, Korea and Vietnam, all of them sharing brief stories about how he had given them a reprieve from the harsh realities they had been in, and then closing with the soldiers singing Hope's signature song, thanks for the Memory, and in a very rare moment where Hopes like compartmentalization and the comic facade, the sort of personality that he showed people publicly, that fell away, and he wept openly at this presentation. I feel like this is the this is like the movie White Christmas, and I cry thinking about that. Also, I highly encourage you. You You can see footage of that event online and if you don't cry, you might be a robot um. It's quite moving and it is really lovely. But hops time with the USO continued after those Kennedy Center honors. His last overseas tour was during the Persian Gulf War in and at that point he was eight seven uh and while his energy had always outpaced almost everyone he worked with, everyone talked about how like they didn't know how he kept going. He was just his machine. He basically would just take cat naps and run on adrenaline for days and days and days. But those techniques, at the age of eight seven, we're not really working. They were not quite enough to keep him from slowing down a little bit. And this was especially true because he continued to always add impromptu performance as to his tours to make sure he reached as many military personnel as possible. So for all of Hope's work with the troops, over fifty years of traveling to dangerous and remote locations just to bring some laughs or some comfort, he was given so many honors, and we're going to tick through just a few of them. So in nineteen sixty eight he was given the Savannah Stayer Award at the U. S. Military Academy at West Point. President Lyndon B. Johnson awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom in nineteen sixty nine. In nineteen seventy one, he received the Department of Defense Medal for Distinguished Public Service. In nine seven, Congress named him an Honorary Veteran. Ninety seven was big for him, as you will see because also in n seven, the U. S. Air Force named a Boeing C. Seventeen Globe Master three, the Spirit of Bob Hope, and one more thing from seven. The US Navy named a T A k R three hundred cargo ship the U s n S. Bob Hope, and that ship incidentally was constructed here in New Orleans by Avondale Industries. It is really really sort of astonishing, uh, to think about all of the work that Bob Hope did with the USO, and then consider, as I mentioned before, that those efforts were all in addition to a very full career as an entertainer, and it is impossible to know, like I said, how many thousands of performances he gave for troops, because there were so many done on the fly that we will probably never know about, sometimes for a few as two or three guys at a time. And in a way, he was inventing a lot of things that are standard elements of comedy today, and a lot of that was tied into his work with the troops. While working in vaudeville, he had developed a really rapid fire style of telling jokes that he honed in these early U. S O tours, essentially developing stand up comedy. Yeah, prior to that, I mean you guys have seen vaudeville stuff where it's like, well, tell the joke and then we wait for the laugh. And he never waited for the laugh. He would just keep rolling into the next joke, which was a completely new way of approaching telling jokes. And as he moved into TV, he did this unique thing because he knew he did not want to deal with the kind of grueling schedule that a weekly show would entail. So instead, uh, he kind of borrowed that idea that was born in Berlin in when he did his Christmas show for the Troops, he essentially created the idea of a comedy special, which is a huge part of the comedy industry today. So in the introduction to one of the books that Holly read while preparing for this show, Bob Hope, Bo Bob Hope biographer wrote the following about his long term work with the U s O. And it seemed like a really good way to close this out. He wrote, all this had a careerist aspect. Of course, Hope sincerely loved entertaining the troops and it fed the patriotic pride of an immigrant who had lived a classic Horatio Algerias success story. But his Troops shows also provided him with huge, easy to please audiences, lofty TV ratings, and boundless good publicity. Still, no cynical view of his motives can diminish the impact that Hope had for setting a standard of public service in Hollywood. We seriously cannot thank the National World Ward Museum enough for graciously hosting us, and particularly their Public Engagement and Community Programs coordinator Amber Mitchell, who made sure everything went smoothly, and she was just an amazing host. The museum was amazing. Everybody that we worked with was so fantastic. The entire staff is incredible. Amber really just like is one of those people that is super relaxed but also super on top of things, so you feel like you're in great hands and like nothing is going to slip through the cracks, and she's just a delight. We also did mention at the top of the show the museum's new podcast, which is called Service on Celluloid, and if you like both film history and military history, uh, it is probably going to be right up your alley. The show looks at how World War Two has been portrayed in film from the nineteen forties right up through modern Cinema, including discussions of saving Private Ryan Schindler's List, and they actually have an upcoming episode on the League of their Own Giant pretty excited about. We're going to include links to that show on our show page for this episode, so it will be easy for you to check out. And again, thank you so much to the World War Two Museum, and just for the city of New Orleans, because everyone that came up for meet and greet after the show was super gracious and they were they wanted to make sure we had enjoyed the city, and I just couldn't be affirmative enough about how much we did. Uh. I have a little listener mail, that is, I won't read the whole mail, but I want to make sure we thank this person. Our listener, Marina, who also listens to a lot of other UH House Stuff Work shows, including UH Stuff You Should Know and UH Stuff to Blow Your Mind and the soundtrack show and Savor. Marina sent us an amazing parcel of delicious things. She's from Germany and so one she mentioned that our show in particular shares parts of history that she didn't really get. She didn't get a lot of American or or certainly British history. We always mentioned that we want to feature other things other than that, but that is the easiest and most accessible history uh info that's usually available to us, so that does tend to be featured a lot um. But then she gave us, like I said, an amazing box of absolutely delicious looking goodies, and I will be sure as she requested to share those throughout the office. So thank you, thank you, thank you, Marina. If you would like to write to us, you can do so at History podcast at house to works dot com. We can also be found pretty much everywhere on social media as missed in History, and you can come to our website missed in History dot com for every episode of the show that has ever aired, as well as show notes on any of the episodes Tracy and I have worked on. So we encourage you come and visit us at missed in History dot com and you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts, I Heart, radios, app or anywhere you get your podcasts. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit housetop works dot com